But they who doubt or hesitate--
Condemned to failure, penury and woe--
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore.
I hear them not, and I return no more."
Ingalls, _Opportunity_.
PREFACE
Arthur Christopher Benson, in the introduction to his studies in
biography entitled "The Leaves of the Tree," says:--
"But when it comes to dealing with men who have played upon the whole a
noble part in life, whose vision has been clear and whose heart has been
wide, who have not merely followed their own personal ambitions, but have
really desired to leave the world better and happier than they found
it,--in such cases, indiscriminate praise is not only foolish and
untruthful, it is positively harmful and noxious. What one desires to see
in the lives of others is some sort of transformation, some evidence of
patient struggling with faults, some hint of failings triumphed over,
some gain of generosity and endurance and courage. To slur over the
faults and failings of the great is not only inartistic: it is also
faint-hearted and unjust. It alienates sympathy. It substitutes unreal
adoration for wholesome admiration; it afflicts the reader, conscious of
frailty and struggle, with a sense of hopeless despair in the presence of
anything so supremely high-minded and flawless.
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